as President, to the Geological Section. 471 



to the history of the subject.^ Again, he wrote on the extension 

 of the Northern Drift and Boulder-clay over the Cotteswold Range,^ 

 and on this occasion described the interesting section in the 

 drifts presented by the Mickleton Tunnel. In his previous paper 

 Mr. Lucy had carried the drifts with northern erratics to a height of 

 750 feet, but he now claimed that " the lohole Cotteswold Range had 

 ceased to be dry land at the time the Clays and Northern Drifts 

 passed over it." We perceive from this passage that Mr. Lucy was 

 a ' submerger,' and in this respect differed from Croll, who most 

 probably would have attributed the phenomena to the action of his 

 great ice-lobe traversing the south of England. 



The question which more immediately concerns us relates to the 

 value of the evidence which would require either a glacier or 

 a * great submergence ' to account for these things. The alleged 

 phenomena are in many cases capable of other interpretations. We 

 have the authority of Mr. Etheridge that little or no true Boulder- 

 clay occurs in the Cotteswold area.^ On the other hand, the 

 distribution of much of the erratic gravel is probably due to 

 agencies of earth-sculpture long anterior to the great Ice Age. 

 There remains one special piece of evidence adduced by Mr, Lucy 

 in favour of his contention, and this he considered of so much 

 importance that it formed the principal part of the subject of his 

 annual address to the Field Club on quitting the chair in 1893.^ 



He there referred more especially to the discovery in the Inferior 

 Oolite, on Cleeve Cloud, of quartzose sand and of a boulder of 

 a similar character to some described in his previous papers. The 

 sand and the boulder, he says, belong to the period of the great 

 submergence. Similar sand also appears in several places on the 

 hillside. He had previously recorded boulders of Carboniferous 

 Limestone, Millstone Grit, etc., in the northern Cotteswolds, but 

 not at 80 great an elevation. He further proceeds to account 

 for the absence of striae, and of the fact that the Cotteswold rocks 

 are not moiUomiee, on the supposition that the soft oolites would 

 not retain striation, but would be crushed by pressure. Con- 

 sequently, he claims the top of Cleeve Cloud as a fine example of 

 ' glacial denudation,' whatever that may mean. The boulder from 

 Cleeve Cloud is now in the Gloucester Museum, and might well 

 become a bone of contention between the submerger and the 

 glacialist as to how it got into its elevated position of over 

 1,000 feet. Fortunately there is a third explanation, which, if 

 it be correct, shows how dangerous it is to build theories, as well 

 as houses, upon sand. Other distinguished members of the 

 Cotteswold Club are of opinion that the whitish sands on Cleeve 

 Common belong to the ' Harford Sands,' which constitute an 

 integral part of the Inferior Oolite itself. There may be some 

 difference of opinion as to the concretionary nature of the boulders, 



1 Proc. Cottes. Nat. Club, vol. v, pt. 2 (1869), p. 71. 



2 Op. cit., vol. vii, pt. 1 (1878), p. 50. 



3 Proc Cottes. Nat. Club, vol. xi (1893), p. 83. 

 * Vol. cit., p. 1. 



